So, we’re about to go to bed for the night. Miraculously, the power hasn’t gone out, because we're surrounded by seventy-mile-per-hour gusts and blowing rain. I let the dogs out dressed in full wet gear. They potty.

But as I’m taking in the last, the Chihuahua-mix, her eyes bulging out of fear of the storm, I hear the stray cat we’ve been feeding for six months start to cry from under the house. Our mobile home sits up about three and one-half feet off the ground, and it uses that space as shelter. We decide to give it some food.

Under the house is dry as day. I place the cat food in a light-blue plastic bowl through a space in the skirting we have left for the cat to come and go. As I’m backing up out of it, a four-foot water moccasin slithers in behind me. It almost ran over my foot!

I’m scared as hell: My dogs will be bit; it will set up a nest under the house; the cat will be struck—Jesus Christ!

I tell my wife: “Get my nine! There’s a snake—a big one right under the house.” She comes out with her .357. I say... “Thanks?…” The Beretta 92FS is my gun; I’m a better shot with it, but hey, a gun’s a gun.

I crawl back under the house. The wind is howling, the rain is splashing, I have to hold the six-volt flashlight in one hand and the Smith and Wesson Model 13 in the other. But the snake hasn’t moved.

I fire once. It moves fast. I fire a second time and hit it midsection and slow it. I fire a third and miss, I can’t hear anymore; then the fourth disintegrates its head. Bam! It’s a doornail.

But I had to pick it up, and it’s still neurologically twisting around—its residual life condemns me for killing it. Yet at the same time all I can think is how thankful I am to God I killed one of His creatures and that He guided my hand in doing so.

I crawl back out into the blowing wet darkness, fresh kill in one hand, the gun and flashlight in the other. I come up to the back porch and show my wife and dogs what I did for them. I feel like a proud rat terrier.

As much as it sucks to have to kill an animal, i understand that sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do. Nice job man. And good for you for taking the headshot instead of just bailing out and letting it die from the body shot.

Thanks, man. I hated it, afterward. You know, if I passed it anywhere else, I would just let it wander off, but I didn't make the universe the way it is. God did.

Quote:Did the snake discuss any apple ingestion ?

Yeah, he was like, "Surely God didn't say I couldn't set up under your house."

(29-08-2012 08:15 AM)Erxomai Wrote: That's a badass story.

It is, isn't it? I was actually holding a flashlight and aiming at the snakes head and blasting away during a hurricane. And if I didn't succeed, I'd have to live with knowing that motherfucker was under there. eeeeeeee. Even now it freaks me out. And the truth is there's probably a snake under there now that I don't even know about. But when it's dry, it wouldn't be a moccasin.

Quote:It's also a happy reminder that I'm quite satisfied living where no such thing as scary creepy crawlies exist.

Where on earth is that?

(29-08-2012 08:23 AM)Stark Raving Wrote: As much as it sucks to have to kill an animal, i understand that sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do. Nice job man. And good for you for taking the headshot instead of just bailing out and letting it die from the body shot.

Egor is a badass too!

That would have really got to me, because honestly I love animals. I just love my dogs and cats more than that particular snake. I am very fortunate to have gotten the head shot, and I'm very thankful.